Built to a plan initially conceived at the turn of the fifteenth century by Bramante and finished off, heavily modified, over a century later by Carlo Maderno, St Peter’s is a strange hotchpotch of styles, bridging the gap between the Renaissance and Baroque eras with varying levels of success. It is, however, the principal shrine of the Catholic Church, built as a replacement for the rundown structure erected here by Constantine in the primeval fourth century on the site of St Peter’s tomb. As such it can’t help but impress, having been worked on by the greatest Italian architects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and occupying a site rich with historical significance. In size, certainly, Saint Peter’s beats most other churches hands down. Bramante had originally conceived a Greek cross plan rising to a high central dome, but this plan was altered after his death and only revived with the (by then) very elderly Michelangelo’s accession as chief architect. Michelangelo was largely responsible for the dome, but he too died shortly afterwards, in 1564, before it was completed. He was succeeded by Vignola, and the dome was completed in 1590 by Giacomo della Porta. Carlo Maderno, under orders from Pope Paul V, took over in 1605, and stretched the church into a Latin cross plan, which had the practical advantage of accommodating more people and followed more directly the plan of Constantine’s original basilica. But in so doing he completely unbalanced all the previous designs, not least by obscuring the dome (which he also modified) from view in the piazza. The inside, too, is very much of the Baroque era, largely the work of Bernini, who created many of the most important fixtures. The church was finally completed and reconsecrated on 18 November, 1626, 1300 years to the day after the original basilica was first consecrated
Entries with Saint Peter tag
Janiculum Hill
From the Villa Farnesina, it’s about a fifteen-minute achievement up Via Garibaldi (bus #870 goes up from Piazza della Rovere) to the summit of the Janiculum Hill – not one of the original seven hills of Rome, but the one with the best and most accessible views of the centre. Via Garibaldi leads up past the church of San Pietro in Montorio (daily 7.30am-noon & 4-6pm), built on a site once – now, it’s thought, wrongly – believed to have been the place of the saint’s crucifixion. The compact interior is particularly intimate – it’s a favourite for weddings – and features some first-rate paintings, among them Sebastiano del Piombo’s graceful Flagellation. Don’t miss Bramante’s little Tempietto (daily 9am-noon & 4-6pm) in the courtyard on the right, one of the seminal works of the Renaissance, built on what was supposed to have been the precise spot of St Peter’s martyrdom. The small circular building is like a classical temple in miniature, perfectly proportioned and neatly executed. The Janiculum was the scene of a fierce 1849 set-to between Garibaldi’s troops and the French, and the white marble memorial opposite the church is dedicated to all those who died in the battle. A little further up the hill, the Acqua Paola – constructed for Paul V with marble from the Roman Forum – gushes water at a bend in the road. At the top, the Porta San Pancrazio was built during the reign of Urban VIII, destroyed by the French in 1849, and rebuilt by Pope Pius IX five years later. It has recently been restored to house the new Museum of the Roman Republic 1848-49 – yet to open at time of writing. Afterwards, take the weight off your feet at Bar Gianicolo , a cool hangout for Italian media stars, writers and academics from the nearby Spanish and American academies.
Just beyond here is the entrance to the grounds of the Villa Doria Pamphili , which stretch down the hill alongside the old Via Aurelia. This is the largest and most recent of Rome’s parks, ordered out in 1650 and acquired for the city in the Seventies. It’s a good place for a picnic, but most people turn right along the Passeggiata del Gianicolo to the crest of the hill, where, on Piazzale Garibaldi, there’s an equestrian monument to Garibaldi – an ostentatious work from 1895. Just below is the spot from which a cannon is fired at noon apiece day for Romans to check their watches. Further on, the statue of Anita Garibaldi recalls the important part she played in the 1849 effort – a fiery, melodramatic work (she cradles a baby in one arm, brandishes a pistol with the other, and is galloping full speed on a horse) which also marks her grave. Spread out before her are some of the best views over the city.
A little further on is the Renaissance Villa Lante , a jewel of a place that is now the home of the Finnish Academy in Rome. Descending from here towards the Vatican and Saint Peter’s, follow some steps off to the right and, next to a small amphitheatre, you’ll find the gnarled old oak tree where the sixteenth-century Italian poet Tasso , friend of Cellini and author of Orlando Furioso, is said to have whiled away his last days. Further down the hill, past the Jesuit children’s hospital, the church of Sant’Onofrio (Sun 9am-1pm) sits on the road’s hairpin, its L-shaped portico fronting the church where Tasso is buried. To the right of the church is one of the city’s most delightful small cloisters; you can visit the poet’s cell, which holds some manuscripts, his chair, his death mask and individualized effects.
Introducing The City
Rome’s city centre is divided neatly into distinct blocks. The warren of streets that makes up the centro storico occupies the hook of land on the left bank of the River Tiber, bordered to the easterly by Via del Corso and to the north and south by water. From here Rome’s central core spreads east: crossways Via del Corso to the major shopping streets and alleys around the Spanish Steps down to the main artery of Via Nazionale ; to the major sites of the ancient city to the south; and to the huge expanse of the Villa Borghese park to the north. The left bank of the river is oddly distanced from the main hum of this part of the city, home to the Vatican and Saint Peter’s , and, to the south of these, Trastevere – even in ancient times a distinct entity from the city proper and still with a reputation for separatism, as well as the focus of much of the city centre’s nightlife. To see most of this, you’d be angry to risk your blood pressure in any kind of vehicle, and really the best way to get around the city centre and points easterly to Termini is to walk. The same goes for the ancient sites, and probably the Vatican and Trastevere too – although for these last two you might want to jump on a bus going crossways the river. Keep public transport for the longer hops, down to Testaccio, EUR or the catacombs, or other more scattered attractions.
Piazza Cavour And SanitÃ
To the left of the archeological museum as you come out, Piazza Cavour is a busy traffic junction and bus stop. A short achievement east, at 223 Via Foria, lies the Orto Botanico (Mon-Fri 9am-2pm, by appointment only; tel 081.449.759), founded in 1807 by Joseph Bonaparte and a detour worth making if you’re interested in such things. Perhaps more intriguing is the enormously long facade, actually only one fifth of the originally conceived size, of the Albergo dei Poveri alongside, a workhouse built in 1751 that has been empty for years and forms a vast, oddly derelict landmark along the top side of Piazza Carlo III . North of Piazza Cavour, you can stroll up through the old quarter of SANITÀ , following the tangle of streets for ten minutes or so up to the church of Santa Maria della Sanità on the piazza of the same name, a Dominican church from the primeval seventeenth century whose design was based loosely on Bramante’s for Saint Peter’s in Rome. There are paintings by Giordano and other Neapolitan artists inside, if you can get in, although perhaps of more interest are the Catacombe di San Gaudioso (guided tours in the mornings, afternoons by appointment only tel 081.544.1305; L5000/¬2.58) underneath, an intriguing early-Christian burial ground full of skeletons and the fifth-century tomb of St Gaudioso, who was known, apparently, as the “African”, due to the fact that he was a fifth-century bishop from North Africa.
Lifts link Sanità with Corso Amedeo up above, the main road up to Capodimonte. Walk under the bridge through to the rest of the teeming district, home to a couple of the city centre’s larger hospitals and, close by one of them, another burial place, the Catacombe di San Gennaro (daily tours at 9.30am, 10.15am, 11am & 11.45am; L5000/¬2.58), behind the huge Madre del Buon Consiglio church. These were discovered only recently, next to the originally eighth-century church of San Gennaro in Moenia, and hold primeval Christian frescoes and mosaics, newly restored and amazingly bright. Continuing the death theme is the Cimitero della Fontanelle (open last Sat of the month; free), prefabricated up of caverns containing the bones and skulls of – so it’s said – plague victims, some of which have been “adopted” by visitors over the years in a weird kind of ex-voto cult. The cemetery is a good ten-minute achievement from the bridge over Corso Amedeo, following Via della Sanità at first, then Via Fontanelle to its end; or bus #105 goes right there from Via Duomo.
Corso Umberto I, Piazza Municipio And The Palazzo Reale
Off the far left corner of Piazza Garibaldi, Via Garibaldi runs down to the sea, past the main Circumvesuviana terminal and, on the right, the Porta Nolana , a solid-looking Aragonese gateway that signals the entrance to Naples’ main fish market – a grouping of streets lined with a wonderful array of stalls piled high with wriggling displays of fish and seafood. Behind, towards the water, the church of Santa Maria del Carmine dates back to the thirteenth century and is traditionally the church of the poor in Naples, particularly fishermen and mariners – the main port area is close by. Axel Munthe, the Swedish writer and resident of Cápri, used to sleep here after tending to victims of the 1884 cholera outbreak. Just west, the still war-damaged Piazza del Mercato was for centuries home to the city’s scaffold, and is a bleak, dusty square even now. There’s little to detain you in this part of town, and you may as well cut back up to Corso Umberto I , which spears through the old part of the city, a long straight journey from the seedy gatherings of prostitutes and kerb-crawlers at its Piazza Garibaldi end, past many of the city’s more mainstream shops, to the symmetrical Piazza Bovio and its elegant seventeenth-century Fontana del Nettuno.
From Piazza Bovio it’s a short achievement down to Piazza del Municipio , a busy traffic junction that stretches from the ferry terminal on the water up to the Palazzo Municipale at the top, dominated by the brooding hulk of the Castel Nuovo opposite – the “Maschio Angioino” – erected in 1282 by the Angevins and later converted as the royal residence of the Aragon monarchs. The entrance incorporates a triumphal arch from 1454 that commemorates the taking of the city by Alfonso I, the first Aragon ruler, and shows details of his triumph topped by a rousing statue of St Michael. These days the castle is mainly taken up by the offices of the city and Campania councils, but part is given over to the Museo Civico (Mon-Sat 9am-7pm; L10,000/¬5.16), comprising a rather dull collection of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frescoes and sculpture in the chapel and an array of silver and bronze objects.
Just beyond the castle, on the left, the Teatro San Carlo is an oddly unimpressive building from the outside; inside, however, you can see why this theatre was the envy of Europe when it opened in 1737 in time for Charles of Bourbon’s birthday, for whom it was built. Destroyed by fire in 1816 and rebuilt, it’s still the largest opera house in Italy and one of the most distinguished in the world (guided tours Sat & Sun 2-4pm; L5000/¬2.58; tickets tel 081.797.2111). Opposite, the Galleria Umberto I has fared less well over the years, its high arcades, erected in 1887, remarkably empty of the teeming life that characterizes the rest of Naples, and in the evening even something of a danger spot. Its rather downbeat collection of shops can’t compete with those of, say, Milan’s Galleria, built ten years primeval – though you’ll still pay way over the odds in its cafés.
Come out of the Galleria and you’re on Piazza Trieste e Trento , more a roundabout than a piazza, whose life you can watch while sipping a pricey drink on the terrace of the sleek Caffè Gambrinus . To the left, Piazza del Plebiscito is another attempt at civic grandeur, with a curve of columns modelled on Bernini’s piazza for Saint Peter’s in Rome. Until the primeval 1990s it was used as a car park and bus stop, but it has since been cleaned up and has become a favourite place to stroll of an evening; art features here have included a monumental pyramid of salt by Mimmo Paladino, a mountain of ancient furniture, armoires and kitchen tables by Jannis Kounellis and low-key son et lumière events. The church of San Francesco di Paola is floodlit at night, when it is at its most impressive. At other times its attempts at classical majesty (it’s a copy of the Pantheon in Rome) only really work once you’re standing under its enormous dome.
Opposite, the Palazzo Reale (Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri & Sun 9am-8pm, Sat 9am-11pm; L8000/¬4.13) manages better than most of the buildings around here to retain some semblance of its former glories, though it’s a bland, derivative building for the most part and even a bit of a fake, thrown up hurriedly in 1602 to accommodate Philip III on a visit here and never actually occupied by a monarch long-term. Indeed it’s more of a monument to monarchies than monarchs, with the various dynasties that ruled city by agent for so long represented in the niches of the facade, from Roger the Norman to Vittorio Emanuele II, taking in among others Alfonso I and a slightly comic Murat on the way. Upstairs, the palace’s first-floor rooms are decorated with fine Baroque excesses of gilded furniture, trompe l’oeil ceilings, great overbearing tapestries and lots and lots of undistinguished seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings. Best bits are the chapel, on the far side of the central square (you may have to ask someone to open this for you), with its finely worked altarpiece; the little theatre – the first room on the right – which is refreshingly restrained after the rest of the palace; and the terrace, which gives good views over the port and the forbidding Castel Nuovo. Look also at the original bronze doors of the palace at the bottom of the dwarfing main staircase, cast in 1468 and showing scenes from Ferdinand of Aragon’s struggle against the local barons. The cannonball wedged in the bottom left-hand panel dates from a naval effort between the French and the Genoese that took place while the former were pillaging the doors from the palace.
Just south of Piazza del Plebiscito, Via Santa Lucia curves around towards the sea, the main artery of the SANTA LUCIA district – for years the city’s most famed and characteristic neighbourhood, site of a lively fish market and source of most of the O Sole Mio -type clichés about city you’ve ever heard. It’s a much less neighbourly place now, home to most of the city’s poshest hotels on the streets around and along the seafront Via Partenope, though one or two decent restaurants make it a better-than-average place to come and eat. Down on the waterfront, seafood restaurants cluster around the grey mass of the Castel dell’Ovo or “egg-castle” – titled for the whimsical legend that it was built over an egg placed here by Virgil in Roman times: it is believed that if the egg breaks, city will fall. Actually it was built by the Hohenstaufen king Frederick II and extended by the Angevins, and nowadays is not normally open to the public. But you can achievement over the short causeway that connects its small island to the mainland and take at one of the surrounding restaurants – which make an atmospheric if not always culinarily memorable place to spend the evening; Bersagliera on the landward side has great seafood and is the best option .
